Google, Meet AdMob

This may surprise you, but cell phones are apparently something of a big deal these days. Okay, maybe it'll surprise you if you've lived in a cave or on a deserted island for the past decade. Cell phones are everywhere and, over the past few years, they've become very much Web-enabled.

When the Internet first surfaced, people started to realize, wait, this is another potential ad stream. The same is true now when it comes to Web-enabled phones and, well, Google understands that oh too well. Which is why today's announcement that they've bought mobile advertising company AdMob shouldn't be too much of a surprise, either.

As Google mentioned in their fact sheet about the purchase, the deal is "similar to mobile advertising acquisitions that AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have made in the past two years." One has to wonder what took Google so long to jump on board, but a best guess is that they wanted to make sure they found the right target first. As the release notes, Google's focus has been search ads, while AdMob handles both Web display and app display ads, while leaving SMS (i.e. text messaging) ads alone for now. The hope is, because Google isn't terribly intrusive (relatively speaking) with their advertising, hopefully they'll use AdMob technologies in a similar fashion.

And the deal's cost? Just $750 million in stock. No biggie, right?

You can find out more about the deal at the Google Blog.

Logo courtesy of Google